And good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. Day 581 of the trump administration, and just tonight a short time ago, in fact, new legal troubles potentially for the president on a new front. Well let the New York Times tell it. Quote, the Manhattan District Attorneys Office is considering pursuing criminal charges against the Trump Organization and two Senior Company officials in connection with Michael Cohens hush money payment to an adult film actress, according to two officials of the matter. A state investigation would settle on how the company accounted for its reimbursements to mr. Cohen for the 130,000 he paid to the actress, stephanie clifford, who has said she had an affair with President Trump, closed quote. Mostly along those same lines a big story today had to do with a long time friend of the president who has apparently turned on him. The publisher of the National Enquirer, david pecker, has been granted immuny by federal prosecutors for information on Michael Cohen. Make no mistake, this is Big Development as one trump friend told vanity fair, holy expletive, i thought pecker would be the last one to turn. He helped that catch and kill negative stories about him. According to Michael CohenPeckers Company paid Karen Mcdougal for exclusive rights of her account of affairs of President Trump and never published it. This week Michael Cohen hipted in court he was directed by the president. And also today according to five sources, the National Enquirer, quote, kept a safe containing documents on hush money payments and other damaging stories it kid as part of its cozy relationship with donald trump leading up to the 2016 president ial election. According to the ap, fearful that the documents might be used against American Media pecker and the companys chief content officer, dylan howard, removed them from the safe in the weeks before trumps inauguration, according to one person directly familiar with the events. More on all of this later. The president has been telling his side of the story concerning the two cohenrelated payments. Heres how he explained them to fox news. Did you direct him to make the payments . He made the deals. And by the way he pled to two counts that arent a crime, which nobody understands. I watched a number of shows. Sometimes you get some pretty good information by watching shows. Those two counts arent even a crime. They werent Campaign Finance. Later on i knew. Later on. They didnt come out of the campaign. They came from me. Remember we heard the president on audiotape talk about one of the payments, and with that answer there the president could just have admitted to possibly violating another Campaign Finance law. Because if that money came from him trump would have had to report it as a campaign expenditure, something he did not do. The president also took issue with cohens guilty plea and suggested that cooperating with authorities in any form should be against the law. If youre saying the payments if theyre not illegal, then why would he why he use that information . Because he makes a better deal when he uses me. This whole thing about flipping, they call it, i know all about flipping. I 30, 40 years ive been watching flippers. Everything is wonderful and then they get ten years in jail and they flip on whoever their next highest one is or as high as you can go. It almost should be outlawed. If you can Say Something bad about donald trump and youll go down to two years or three years, which is the deal he made, in all fairness to him most people are going to do that. And ive seen it many times. Ive had many friends involved in this stuff. Its called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal. And also tonight reports the president has considered a possible pardon for paul manafort. But to use plain english here there are many conflicting reports as there are a number of media interviews. People conducting today with Rudy Giuliani, who as fate would have it is in scotland playing golf at a trump golf course. The Washington Post told giuliani told manafort of pardoning him several weeks ago. Giuliani has also spoken to the New York Times telling the paper that similar discussions about a pardon was initiated by the lawyers and not by the president. Giuliani spoke to nbc news as well, and he told us the president never specifically sought his lawyers advice several weeks ago on whether to pardon manafort, and they talked about, quote, pardons in general. Tonight the white house denies that a pardon is being discussed and that no decision has been made. Meanwhile, as the president grapples with his legal challenges and the investigations of his associates, he is taking aim once again at his attorney general jeff segs who has been one of his most loyal lieutenants in this administration. Coming up youll hear the president s latest complaints about the job sessions is doing. But first here now is how trump describes his own job performance. What grade do you give yourself so far . So i give myself an a plus. I dont think any president has ever done what ive done in this short we havent even been two years. I would honestly give myself an a plus, and so would other people. On that note lets bring in our lead off panel on a thursday night. Robert costa for the Washington Post and moderator of the a plus Washington Week on pbs. Jill colvin, frank, former assistant for the fbi intelligence. And also the former assistant u. S. Attorney for the Southern District of new york and also happens to be the former district attorney. First of all, what should people think about this the New York Times story tonight, manhattan da eyeing potential charges against Trump Organization and two senior execs . This is this is very interesting development, and its interesting for three reasons. First, remember the president cannot pardon someone especially his own organization for state or local crimes. Secondly, this is showing that theres increasing pain being brought to anyone associated with this president. And when you bring pain to associates of the president you increase the likelihood that people cooperate as they assess that cost benefit analysis. And thud, brian, while the u. S. Department of justice may well have a legal memo in their files discouraging the indictment of a sitting president theres no such memo in the Manhattan Das Office or the Attorney Generals Office in new york. Frank, i thought about you today. All of of the former friends. He is supposed to be the protector and up holder of the rule of law and there he was today talking about socalled flipping, coming out against cooperating with government prosecutors. Its becoming increasingly clear, brian, that this president never truly had longterm or National Interests at heart. Its all about his selfinterest. And whats ironic, increasingly ironic, is that a man who is driven entirely by his selfinterest is being done in by cooperators who are operating on the same premise. Theyre look out for themselves. So hes being burned by the people who operate on the same philosophy he does. The attorneys at your former jurisdiction, Southern District of new york, comport themselves and carried out what it is they carried out. What did you make of hearing the president s words today of cooperating with the government . I was stunned. And i think frank hit the nail on the head. Its all about the president s selfinterest. Who are the people who truly fear and despise correspondenting witness, the head of criminal organizations. Terrorist attacks, massive financial frauds in fact, this president says hes going to be the one whos going to bring down ms13 and street gangs. Ill tell you what, without cooperating witnesses hes never going to touch the real leaders of those organizations. Talk about your organization reporting upon this safe. My colleague whos really been covering this story for over a year, talked to former ami employees. Ami, American Media international. Exactly. The folks under the confidentiality agreement. What they told jeff is theres actually a safe in the offices there used to store all of the documents that had to do with the various hush fund payments, documents related to the trump payments but also other settlements. The way the National Enquirer appear tuesday have worked is they had this catch and kill policy, wrab they would pay people for their stories in an effort to prevent them from ever being published. It was something frustrated for writers who worked there because you got a big scoop and then you have your boss out there saying no, this can never be published. And what the reporting reveals and court finding revealed is this pattern that cohen had with this organization and actively using them to try to find out whether there are any stories brewing out there and sending them after to kill them. Jill, did that includes stories against opponents, commissioning stories against people like Hillary Clinton . I know we have a montage of some of their covers in the past. Im glad you mentioned that. Its really interesting. As early as 2010 employees said that cohen and the National Enquirer were in conversations. It was as early as 2010 the National Enquirer was running stories, kind of boosting the president s ambitions. Linking to a site cohen had set up. And theres stories in which the National Enquirer wrote no negative stories about President Trump and had story after story that was deeply negative not only to Hillary Clinton but remember their ted cruz coverage, really ridiculous allegations the president then used on the campaign trail to try to discredit ted cruz. You see this pattern of this News Organization i use the term News Organization very loosely this organization, you know, seemingly working on behalf of trumps campaign. And i imagine a lot more will be coming out. Bob costa, you had the president today seemingly divorced from his role as the head of a lawabiding society. Youve always been a very good west wing whisperer and interpreter. By how much is there a sense that the walls may be closing in . Theres a sense of shock inside this white house because of the double barrelled legal news that happens on tuesday. Still reeling from that in most respects. And the president has become isolated, but it was isolated in many ways over the last few weeks. Hes been unhappy with Michael Cohen, the person he relied upon to talk to people like david pecker, keep him in the tabloids, handle situations behind the scenes. Now he feels betrayed. The candidates been named by cohen in court, and so now its been brought to the presidency. When you listen to sara sanders, the press secretary and others, they keep saying theyre not talking about pardons in the white house. But that doesnt mean the president is not talking about manafort and cohen with people like giuliani playing golf in scotland. For frank, for all of us who dont have a background in your background or law degrees, when we talk about immunity weve thrown out a lot legal terms over the past couple of weeks. What does immunity mean or the feds know you have to offer . So first immunity is not handed out lightly and two factors have to be present. One is you have to believe that the person youre granting immuny to is exposed to criminal charge, number one. Number two, theres some benefit to getting him to talk and giving him incentive to talk. Its important here to understand that we dont know the full degree of immunity that was provided. We dont know the degree to which mr. Pecker has agreed to cooperate. Whether its going to be an entire historical provision of everything he knows about the president and all, or whether its limited to simply pay off to two women. We dont know that yet. Theres some Unanswered Questions here, but clearly mr. Pecker has made a tactical decision to protect himself and to cooperate with the special counsels office, and that should give the president and his attorneys great pause tonight. The contents of that safe that were talking about, which mr. Pecker relocated those contents soon after the president was elected, we have to assume and the president s attorneys have to assume those are in the hands of the special counsels office. They should be very worried about that. In my lifetime anytime you say the word safe it gets peoples attention because it means stuff they dont want out there. Whats the difference you tell people between immunity and the president s term, flipping . Theyre sort of different species but similar. If a person doesnt have quite enough criminal exposure, so you cant require them to take a plea, theyll respond the fifth. And you can give them immunity. They still have to tell the truth, still have to testify. But unlike Michael Cohen had to plead guilty to a charge someone whos immunized doesnt actually have to plead guilty to a criminal charge. Its a way to get testimony you might not otherwise be able to get. Theres manafort tonight in a lock up. Hes already been through one trial, awaiting his second. Hes already been knicked on enough charges if they give him the maximum, he could be in prison for a long time. Hes getting a message thats not a phone call but its pretty much as direct as a blinking red light. When you get joll yawny talking about how he has had conversations with the president about pardons in recent weeks, its a reminder why mr. Manafort hasnt said a word in court. Sitting, waiting, convicted but he sees hope on the horizon. And his lawyers im told are telling him to sit tight. He has another trial coming up in d. C. , but if he sits tight he could get a play out. We were all home from our shift here, which we consider the night shift, 1 10 a. M. , the president took to twitter and had caps lock on. Obviously no collusion, rigged witch hunt. I dont imagine, jill, the president feels hes getting the air support he would like these days. No, he doesnt. And this is something even allies of the president outside of the building have also been critical of, feeling theres not been this coordinated effort to fight back. Youve got giuliani making contradicting statements and youre not seeing, for instance, what you saw during the clinton administration, where there was an organized effort, outside team who were there to try to push back in a coordinated professional manner. And that means youve got a president whos furious, who always feels like the media is out to get him, and who now is watching the television, you know, flipping the channel and not seeing any type of coordinated defense for him. Much obliged to our front four on a busy thursday night. Thank you all very, very much. Coming up President Trump once again attacks his own attorney general, but this time Jeff Sessions hits back. And then later president ial scandal. An investigation into the president and chatter of things like high crimes and misdemeanors. The kind of talk we havent heard in this country since way back in 1998. The 11th hour is just Getting Started on this thursday evening. Ahh. Summer is coming. And its time to get outside. Pack in even more adventure with audible. With the Largest Selection of audiobooks. Audible lets you follow plot twists off the beaten track. Or discover magic when you hit the open road. With the free audible app, your stories go wherever you do. And for just 14. 95 a month you get a credit, good for any audiobook. If you dont like it exchange it any time. No questions asked. You can also roll your credits to the next month if you dont use them. So take audible with you this summer. On the road. On the trail. Or to the beach. Start a 30day trial and your first audiobook is free. Cancel anytime, and your books are yours to keep forever. No matter where you go this summer make it better with audible. Text summer17 to 500500 to start listening today. This wifi is fast. I know i know i know i know when did brian move back in . Brians back . He doesnt get my room. Hes only going to be here for like a week. Like a month, tops. Oh boy. Wifi fast enough for the whole family is simple, easy, awesome. In many cultures, young men would stay with their families until their 40s. I put in an attorney general that never took control of the justice department, jeff session. Never took control of the just department. Jeff sessions recused himself, which he shouldnt have done, or he should have told me. Even my enemies say that Jeff Sessions should have told you he was going to recuse himself and then you wouldnt have put him in. He took the job and then he said im going to recuse myself. I said what kind of a man is this. And by the way he was on the campaign. You know, the only reason i gave him the job because i felt loyalty. President trump attacking his own ag again for recusal as you heard and never taking control of the justice department. But hours later came a rare brush back from the a. G. Himself, quote, i took control of the department of justice the day i was sworn in, which is why we have had unprecedented success in afeck chting the president s agenda. While i am